This study investigated English teacher motivation in Japanese secondary schools. Participants were two male Japanese teachers of English and their students. Data was collected through interviews, classroom observations, and focus-group interviews with students in one academic year. The findings showed that each teacher had unique motivation, and this was reflected in their teaching. Students also understood what teachers focused on. The study showed that teacher motivation can influence their teaching and their students.

This presentation will share research on how dubbing audio in the EFL classroom impacts student oral proficiency. The presenter will share data comparing the pre-post oral proficiency from two groups of students. The experimental group worked with dubbed audio materials and the control group did not. Findings related to variation in proficiency across the two groups will be discussed.

Assistant language teachers (ALTs) entering the Japan Exchange and Teaching (JET) Programme serve in a role that ranges from language model to international communicator. As the native model of English education becomes less important globally, ALTs role in the classroom shifts. In this study, interviews with former JET ALTs were conducted to understand perceptions of teaching philosophy and teacher development before and after entering JET. Findings are interpreted in terms of recommendations for teacher training.

There has been a noticeable increase in Vietnamese student numbers in higher education recently, changing class dynamics for many teachers. This presentation uses the results of a mixed method study exploring motivations of Vietnamese studying in Japan, and the challenges they encounter including financial and social effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Understanding these motivations will give educators a fresh perspective of the Vietnamese diaspora, and suggestions to better accommodate them.

The present study proposes an explicit instruction to teach English lexical categories to Japanese students. College-level Japanese students were tested on their knowledge of lexical categories, i.e., whether they were able to distinguish and identify four major categories: nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs. Then the explicit instruction was given to them, focusing on morphological properties, i.e., types of affixes, and syntactic properties such as categories’ sentence positions, showing the effect of the instruction.

Generally, authentic materials are considered difficult for low L2 proficiency learners. The study found that when L2 learners engage in connected learning by watching multimedia videos and reading texts of the relevant topic together, and the content is meaningful to them, they perceive authentic content learning positively. In this presentation, I will share relevant research and some participants' responses to show how deeply they were able to learn TED Talk ideas through connected learning.

Being immersed in virtual reality using a headset device encourages language use and improves learner confidence. Launching a virtual reality program is a fairly simple process. In this session we will introduce you to the Immerse Virtual Language Experience Platform, an integrated application to connect with learners in virtual reality for facilitated language instruction. This session will provide step-by-step details to prepare you to bring your English program to life in virtual reality.

The presenters will share the results of a mixed-methods study investigating the effects of different types of writing practice on developing complexity, accuracy, and fluency (CAF) in the writing of Japanese university students. Three groups who received regular practice in either sentence-combining, translation, or fluency writing were compared on measures of CAF across one semester. The findings from the study will be discussed in terms of pedagogical implications for writing instructors.

In Japan the Ministry of Education (MEXT) has long focused on expanding English in order to prepare students for the realities of an increasingly globalized world, embarking on an extensive program that integrates native speakers of English into the school system as teachers while offering English lessons at progressively younger ages. To examine changes in international posture, the current study utilizes an extensive data set encompassing grades 5-12 of Japanese learners of English.

This presentation highlights a support project for Japanese students enrolled in online study abroad (SA) programs. As a result of pandemic-related travel restrictions, some students have started online SA programs. However, the barrier to desired increases in intercultural competency is challenging. This project sought to enrich online SA experiences by providing supplementary lessons aimed at enhancing intercultural awareness. This presentation highlights how the project was set up, and participants’ perceptions of the support lessons’ value.

Do people hear the same voice differently, depending on the face they see? Will they report hearing a foreign accent when presented with a photograph of a foreigner (when the speaker is actually a native speaker)? This study investigated how perceived race affected 223 listeners’ ratings of intelligibility, comprehensibility, and accentedness. Findings indicate a strong effect of racial bias regarding accentedness, and disparate attributions of listening difficulty depending on the perceived race of the speaker.

This presentation examines how newcomers to a community must be initiated into a target discourse community, including learning shared beliefs, values, vocabulary, and processes (Borg, 2003; Swales, 1990). Furthermore, this presentation uses an autoethnographic approach to show an example of becoming an engaged member and leader in a professional community of practice. Finally, this presentation will demonstrate how mentoring, coaching, and orientation are important interventions in a community of practice of academic professionals in Japan.

EFL university students are often crippled by their writing anxiety, making it difficult for them to accomplish a myriad of academic writing requirements in English. Understanding the types and levels of students’ writing anxiety would help EFL teachers improve their pedagogical approaches in making students confidently write right.

This study examines the effects of study abroad experiences on Japanese university students’ long-term L2 motivation. Thirteen students who had attended a three-week program in the US at the end of their second year participated in the study. They completed a questionnaire and had follow-up interviews before their departure, upon their return, 5 months later, 10 months later, and upon graduation. Following the presentation of the results, pedagogical implications will be discussed.

There is a growing interest in using automatic grammar checkers for English language teaching. To find the optimal way of using machine corrective feedback, the researcher experimented with 75 second-year university students. They received three types of feedback: machine feedback by Grammarly, indirect written feedback with marking, and direct written feedback with correct forms. Students’ views collected through a post-questionnaire suggested the complementary use of Grammarly could raise students’ satisfaction levels while lowering teachers’ burden.

This presentation aims to describe how a new college CLIL course combining career education and English learning influenced students’ well-being and happiness. Through the three questionnaires conducted at the beginning and the end of the semester, it was found that the students’ subjective happiness significantly increased. It was also indicated that positive feelings were enhanced. Some fun and happiness-enhancing activities based on positive psychology and cognitive neuroscience will also be presented.

This presentation looks at the role of a film project and its role in student attitudes and motivation. In this project, two separate student groups worked collaboratively to create either a voice-over or dialogue recording from a choice of two different film clips in a university non-credit course. In this presentation, I will report on the results of a survey given to the students and comment on the role of films in English learning.

Japan has instituted a number of initiatives to internationalize its higher education sector. This presentation outlines a mixed methods study exploring the role of leadership in these processes. The study compared Japanese and non-Japanese academics’ (N = 153) perceptions of leadership using the full range leadership model. The results informed a second phase of semi-structured interviews (N = 10). The results provide insight on effective leadership for current and aspiring leaders working in EFL contexts.

This corpus-based study examines lexical bundles and their functions observed in Taiwanese college English majors’ essays. Three corpora of academic essays were established based on the students’ writing fluency levels. An online instrument, N-Gram Extractor (Lextutor), was used to identify 2- to 6-word lexical bundles. The results showed the intermediate-fluency-level students used more lexical bundles, whereas the lower-fluency-level students hardly produced any. Stance bundles were found to be the most used function types.

This research explores Japanese EFL learners’ repeated pragmalinguistic errors in using modal verbs for social functions. They may lead to stabilization (a temporal stop of learners’ development) and fossilization (a permanent loss of learners’ progress). Data from online forum discussions show that participants utilized limited English modal functions, while some seemed to have acquired certain pragmalinguistic norms adequately without continuous intervention. Findings are discussed based on Han’s (2009, 2013) selective fossilization hypothesis.

Multimodal remediation-based compositions (MRCs) are multimodal compositions where students convert a composition from one mode to another. This study examines EFL students’ perceptions of MRCs. How does doing MRCs impact student perceptions of L2 writing? How do student perceptions differ between text-based compositions (TC) and multimodal compositions (MC)? Findings show that doing MRCs did not change student perceptions of L2 writing. However, students did have distinct perceptions distinguishing TCs from MCs.

Research in psychology has found that certain types of writing tasks can have a lasting impact on the writers’ overall sense of well-being. This is potentially of great interest to educators, as an individual’s level of happiness also correlates to other benefits that can positively impact student learning. This presentation will share the findings of an empirical study applying these techniques to an EFL classroom to see if these benefits extend to L2 writers.

The purpose of this presentation is to introduce the research methodology of ethnography of language policy (ELP). ELP applications are not limited to educational settings, and can investigate language policies in families, in companies, and multilingual workplaces. The presenter will explain the steps of how to conduct an ethnography of language policy and offer advice on possible pitfalls. Examples from an ongoing study will be used to help illustrate important features and possible problems.

EILで軽視されても日本人学生は英語ネイティブの英語圏文化に憧れを持つ。一方で欧米の文化規範に無知な為、英語コミュニケーションにおいて心理的文化的葛藤を抱えている。そこで異文化適応目的のESLを受講した大学生に理想的な教室活動を尋ねた。ＡＩや自動翻訳世代のESL教授法を日本人学習者目線で論じたい。

Loanwords, or gairaigo, continue to capture the attention of teachers, researchers, and the general public. Yet how useful, really, are loanwords for Japanese learners of English? In this presentation I will reflect on a three-year project investigating the potential of loanwords for lexical inferencing. I will describe my findings from recent empirical studies investigating whether simply raising learners’ awareness of loanwords can increase the accuracy of their guesses about the meaning of unknown English words.

Low-level students often struggle to speak up within orally interactive classwork due to problems with confidence, anxiety, and task difficulty. Participants will be introduced to a powerful three-stage scaffolding model for tasks which helps students improve fluency over time by better preparing, checking, and reviewing planned speech. Recent data on the influence of the model on engagement and performance will be shared and guidance given on applying the model to any language learning context.

English instructors in Japanese universities hold differing principles regarding the amount of Japanese and English that they use in the classroom. In 2020, these principles were tested for many teachers when classes shifted online. The present study aimed to learn how distance learning affects teachers’ medium of instruction through interviews and observations of Zoom lessons. Findings indicate that technology poses problems as well as offers new opportunities to English instructors.

The presenter will report on the effectiveness of the literacy program she developed for 5th and 6th graders of public elementary schools in Tokyo. She worked with the school board and compared the students in experimental schools and those in control schools (N = 3085). The ANOVA results suggested that the students developed their reading ability and its subset abilities significantly, and the effectiveness of the program was verified.

In this presentation, the researcher will explore how researchers could act as an intermediary between primary and junior high school teachers, co-construct the local English language education curriculum, and help build a local professional teaching community towards a smooth transition from primary to junior high school. She will tell a story of how an emerging professional teaching community has been unfolding in the local context and those involved have been influencing each other.

In post-war Japan, ronin were university teachers: nearly all were lecturers who worked part-time at various universities around town. Recently, the ronin has been re-envisioned with foreign university English teachers. Here, the question of why pursue a teaching career in Japan at all was investigated. Publicly-available data of over 300 university teachers in Japan was examined, and the data confirms much of what is already known about teaching in university in Japan with some surprises.

This presentation will give the results of a mixed methodology study that took place in late 2020 on the factors influencing the perspectives of young Japanese voters on nuclear energy and armament policies. Derived from the results of an extensive survey of 1293 students, a series of lesson plans were developed for a class to explore issues related to a difficult topic through the target L2.

Research investigating listening lessons has shown how teachers prioritise vocabulary-based and problem-solving opportunities but give grammar and background knowledge a lower priority. This presentation outlines three teachers’ current listening practices in a pre-sessional EAP course at a New Zealand university. Three classroom observation lessons and interviews outline the teachers’ use of the textbook, supplementary materials, and feedback. The presentation also provides listening-based suggestions for educators to use in their own tertiary-level listening classrooms.

This paper aims to present how a group of eight student teachers teach English language online in seven primary schools in East Malaysia. The focus of this study is looking at the strategies and types of technological tools incorporated into the lessons. The paper also highlights some of the challenges faced by the student teachers and how they attempted to overcome those challenges during the three-month practicum stint.

This presentation reports individual differences in L2 English proficiency gains after one year in an intensive English program at a small private university in Japan, using test scores, a survey, and interviews. For the current study, cluster analysis was used to identify subgroups from a large cohort based on their test preparation and experience. Cluster analysis, a multivariate exploratory procedure, revealed five subgroups, organised by their proficiency gains or losses, and test familiarity and preparation.

This presentation reports on findings from a mixed-methods research study with 40 beginner-level university students to explore the effects of asynchronous and synchronous online peer feedback (AOPF and SOPF) on their lexical diversity in writing based on data collected from students’ cause-and-effect essay drafts and their feedback comments. Findings illustrated that AOPF provided students with more opportunities to negotiate with others and had a more positive influence on their lexical diversity than SOPF.

This corpus-based research investigates vocabulary taught in Japanese EFL senior high school textbooks. Results show that most vocabulary words appearing in textbooks are what native speakers often use, indicating that Japanese EFL learners can be exposed to high-frequency words in the real world by using textbooks. However, textbooks cannot suffice in order for learners to read English texts intended for native speakers.

In this presentation, a case study of how teaching and non-teaching staff members in a university in Japan conducted study abroad advising in 2020 will be examined. The presenter will describe two different approaches of study abroad advising (online seminars and advising desk) and the outcomes for university students in a comprehensive private university in Japan. Implications for future styles of study abroad advising and language education in the new normal will be further discussed.

A study was conducted to examine the ability of Japanese learners to decode English-based loanwords and English non-loanwords. Target items were presented aurally in English and participants were asked to transcribe the word in English and also write a Japanese translation. The results were then analysed for word frequency, accuracy of spelling and translation, and the effect of being a cognate or non-cognate. Important findings will be presented and their implications discussed.

In this presentation, I will report on a three-year motivational interview study that focuses on two cases of academically-oriented Japanese learners when they were at university, graduate school, and after one of them started a professional career. The study examines the development of motivations to study English and languages other than English and the interactions between them. The results highlight the factors necessary to be multilingual in a context where multilingualism is not emphasized.

The number of international faculty at Japanese universities has grown substantially over the last few decades. However, not much is known regarding their satisfaction with work and degree of integration into their universities. This research analyzes data obtained from a multi-item online survey in 2019 measuring the degree of work satisfaction and integration. Findings suggest that faculty at universities with strong policies toward diversity and internationalization demonstrate stronger perceptions of both integration and satisfaction.

This research presents the impact of using e-feedback in teaching language education research on graduate students’ research papers’ content and organization during the pandemic. The e-written feedback was integrated into students’ writing outputs. The e-oral feedback was conducted one-on-one through Zoom and Facebook messenger from November 2020-February 2021. Findings from the survey and focus-group discussion showed that the students claimed that their research papers’ content and organization improved, and immediate e-feedback was essential.

This study presents teachers’ cognitions on pronunciation feedback in an online environment. Teachers’ written comments on students’ pronunciation and semi-structured interviews reveal that the teachers have various approaches to providing pronunciation feedback. In particular, they encourage students to increase their confidence in speaking rather than correcting the pronunciation based on the native speaker norm. This presentation concludes with a brief discussion of implications for feedback on pronunciation both in online study and the classroom.

In this study, students in an online IELTS reading course were expected to read English texts of their choice independently every day and record their efforts in a journal. Analysis of journal and interview data showed that students were good at maintaining a daily reading habit but chose short and non-academic texts often. The researcher will reflect on the tricky balance between authenticity in extensive reading and targeting specific text types.

This presentation will introduce an action research project designed to improve students’ productive vocabulary accuracy conducted with intermediate-level Japanese university students. We implemented two weeks of receptive and productive vocabulary interventions for one textbook unit. Through carrying out quantitative surveys, semi-structured interviews, and speaking test transcriptions, the results of this project indicated a marked improvement in student productive vocabulary accuracy.

This presentation begins with concerns about commercial placement tests that led the researchers to develop their own. The presenters demonstrate steps to determining item types, producing them, trialing them, and refining the test instrument. Design tips for making test administration run smoothly are also shared. Statistical analyses supporting validity and reliability are presented. Finally, challenges and how they were overcome will be discussed. Anyone considering developing their own placement test may benefit from this presentation.

The present study compares CLIL course vocabulary test performances of Japanese EFL university students with a higher initial level of vocabulary to those with a lower one. The findings showed that students who knew the most frequent 4,000 word families of English scored high on all the tests; however, those with less vocabulary knowledge did not reveal straightforward tendencies. The presenter will explain possible factors which led to these results.

Although strategies to improve communicative competence are increasing, there are students whose self-perception towards language learning results in language anxiety due to the inability to present ideas purely in L2. This research explores how university students and teachers perceive the presence of L1 in the classroom and how its presence correlates with student anxiety and motivation. Moreover, this study centers on translanguaging as a possible approach in a monolingual country like Japan.

This study aimed to see the difficulties and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on a virtual listening class, and the students’ experiences in the listening class at the university level who are living in a rural area in Indonesia.

Translanguaging reconceptualises language and speakers in Japan and how “the” foreign language, English, is taught in Japanese high schools.

In Zoom online English lessons, the researcher-teacher conducted explicit instruction in reading strategies by using two web cameras: one showing the teacher’s face, and the other showing her hand and explicitly showing where she was pointing in an English text. This presentation examines how beginner-level university students perceived the online explicit strategy instruction by using two cameras and how it influenced their English reading.

In this study, I examined formulaic language that appears in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) textbooks. I classified these expressions according to their functions, such as disagreeing or asking questions. I also compared the most frequent expressions from this textbook corpus to a corpus of academic spoken English. Attendees will also hear a discussion of the larger differences between language in academic textbooks and naturally occurring language.

In this presentation, two learning advisors will report on their use of relational mentoring in a duoethnographic approach for their continuing professional development (CPD). They will highlight how mentoring affected each of them and their practices over the course of this regular engagement. The implications of this study will be of value to any educators interested in CPD through online mentoring and in the use of duoethnography as a form of reflective practice.

Textbooks offer teachers guidance and support in their teaching and provide learners with a familiar lesson framework in learning. However, textbooks present many lexical, syntactic, and grammatical challenges for learners. This study investigates the lexical profile and vocabulary load of two popular university-assigned ELT textbooks. Upon the vocabulary analysis of each textbook and their subsequent units, the results show the lexical demands required for second language learners in ELT and Japanese tertiary-level programmes.

In Thailand, implementing an extensive reading program (ERP) at a university level is relatively new, especially with the integration of an online library. After two semesters of the ERP implementation at a large public university in Bangkok, a study has been conducted to investigate freshmen’s attitudes toward extensive reading, and experiences in reading graded readers online on Xreading.com. Students’ feedback will shed light on what needs to be done to improve the ERP.

This paper reviews studies that employed mixed-methods research (MMR) designs in L2 writing research. It discusses what MMR is, how it can be a self-standing paradigm, and what makes it a distinctive paradigm. It then explores benefits and challenges of conducting MMR in L2 writing research and introduces and reflects on a recent MMR study on L2 writing conferences in a university setting.

In Japan, many Ministry of Education (MEXT) approved foreign language textbooks are written by textbook committees predominated by middle-aged Japanese males. Thus, it is reasonable to examine how textbooks may inadvertently contribute to cultural prejudices and personal biases that learners absorb as a byproduct of study. This analysis of MEXT approved textbooks for elementary school learners uncovered disturbing (yet unsurprising) instances of bias and disadvantaged positioning. Recommendations for addressing these issues are included.

When planning a class it is sometimes difficult to predict which activities will work, particularly in online classes. This presentation draws together threads from student interviews and existing literature on student engagement and willingness to communicate, in order to re-interpret learner actions in terms of emotion labor (Hochschild, 1979). It suggests that by taking account of students’ potential emotion labour, teachers can develop trust and increase the chances of successful classroom participation online or face-to-face.

There is increasing pressure to equip students with global skills and to be able to use English. This presentation details a project-based communication task for junior high school students in one school. Also, the elements that facilitated how the project was adapted from an out-of-class oral research project to an in-class collaborative written communication project in response to the limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic will be highlighted.

The presenter will discuss the results of a year-long case study of three university EFL teachers working in Japan during the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants practiced several techniques inspired by ancient Stoic philosophy, which were adapted specifically for teachers by the presenter. The results of the study showed beneficial effects on self-reported measures of well-being and teaching efficacy. The presenter will also demonstrate how audience members can use these techniques in their own teaching contexts.

Many Japanese students struggle with confidence when speaking English. Flipgrid is a website that allows students to submit audio and video reports as well as view other submissions. At a university with non-English majors, this study, with a control and a test group, was made to find out if use of the Flipgrid website helped students increase the length of oral responses on oral examinations during the course of one semester.

This study investigated the effect of an authentic practice: using smartphones in L2 on vocabulary acquisition and learning motivation. Participants who had changed their smartphone system language to English and used them in L2 for a one-week period were found to improve their vocabulary knowledge and learning motivation, which indicated the potential of using smartphones in L2 as an effective language learning approach.

本研究ではイラン人日本語学習者を対象に、ペルシア語母語話者日本語学習者のト、バ、タラの特定状況に対する選択傾向の測定及び習得を検討する。理解テストと翻訳テストを用いた結果、イラン人にとって日本語の条件表現の正しい使用法の認識は困難であり、その理由はペルシア語条件表現が限られているためだと考えられる

This study investigated the kind of problems Japanese EFL learners encounter when listening to English. The presenters collected data from 94 Japanese university students. In the listening test, the participants listened to and transcribed three different but easy passages. The participants were found to recognize approximately 75% of what they listened to. The mistakes were separated into five categories, and the presenters will discuss them showing sample mistakes.

This study explored doctoral students’ construction of and participation in a community of practice in a course on educational technology use in second/foreign language (SL/FL) education. Findings indicate the participants identified themselves as members of a supportive family of language professionals and nascent academics. Multimodal projects they completed in their course served as testaments to their evolving status as developing experts in both these fields. Implications for practice and research are also discussed.

TOEFL®テストは世界中で3,500万人以上が受験したもっとも実績あるアカデミックテストです。昨年以来新型コロナウイルス感染が広がる中、TOEFL®テストは自宅受験の実施など様々な取り組みを行いました。新テストであるTOEFL® Essentials™テストの紹介も含め、最新情報をご説明します。

A controversial English-only policy for teaching English was recently introduced to junior high schools. This presentation shows the analysis of the policy-making process, with a focus on policy makers’ differing positions toward English education and the English-only policy. The analysis revealed a complex process in which those positions were conflated in the English-only policy, while the position prioritizing oral communication in English education became prominent, portraying political struggles in developing Japan’s English education policy.

The presenter explores results after the first cycle of an action research project which applies the illustrative scales of the CEFR/CV to explain ways students in a mixed-level CLIL classroom navigate meaning from texts and lectures, especially when the level of the materials may be above their level. Although efforts are made to match student abilities, mixed-levels, as well as the nature of university-level material, often means materials may be above student level.

Use of MALL in university language learning contexts looks set to grow as students’ natural affinity for mobile technology continues to increase. This presentation will discuss a semester-long study designed to research the efficacy and the experience of using the mobile-learning application Duolingo as a language learning aid. It examines the impact of the regular use of this application on student language acquisition through pre- and post-tests, and it investigates student attitudes through survey results.

This presentation investigates language learners’ beliefs about error logs which combine uncoded, focused corrective feedback. Participants were enrolled in writing classes at a Japanese university which were conducted both on campus and online using Zoom and Google Classroom. Students were required to complete an error log in which they identified and corrected targeted errors and mistakes. This study gathered data from language learner diaries, interviews, and metaphors to gain an in-depth understanding of learners’ beliefs.

This presentation discusses the use of artworks as teaching materials in the EFL classroom. Students at a Japanese art university participated in the study over three semesters. Qualitative data was collected through student essays and participatory responses, suggesting that narrative representational paintings increased student participation, engagement, and motivation. Improvement in vocabulary acquisition and descriptive writing was also noted. The study was motivated by curiosity about the visual arts and their possible roles in EFL.

Translation is not just a mechanical transference of meaning from one language into another; rather, the pragmatic features of both languages need to be considered when decoding the meaning embedded in the source language and encoding it into the target language. To this end, this experimental study was conducted to investigate the effect of developing pragmatic knowledge on the quality of translation of culture-bound texts as well as the best method of developing pragmatic knowledge.

Although there is an apparent need for scrutiny of the lived experiences of foreign assistant language teachers (ALTs) in their situated contexts, research addressing them has been insufficient. This study explored, via narrative interviews, the identities and their constructions of 25 ALTs in the JET Programme. The findings revealed that the gestalt of ALT identity comprises two primary categories: foreigner identity and dabbler identity, and their six incumbent sub-identities (e.g., sojourner and greenhorn).

Most studies on motivation and translanguaging have focused on learning L2 English due to its role as a dominant international language of power. In this presentation, we report on two intrinsic case studies (Stake, 1995) of Japanese majors of English who studied in Taiwan for 11 months. Following a survey of their translanguaging practices in Japanese, English, and Chinese, we interviewed them to explore the motivations underlying their language choices.

This presentation outlines research into student experiences of remote learning. The initial goal was to learn more about students’ online learning experiences and devise informed interventions. The presentation outlines a three-step information gathering process: exit cards, a qualitative survey of reflections, and a Google Forms survey to quantify experiences across the department. These provide insight into factors that influenced students’ satisfaction with remote-learning and illustrate the benefits of engaging students in the process of analysis.

From 2014, Myanmar began reforming primary school English education, and new textbooks from grades 1 to 4 have been introduced into all public primary schools. The presenters, who were involved in developing the textbooks, will compare the current books with the former ones. Based on observations of classes and the voices of teachers from online forums, they will discuss the positive reviews of the textbook as well as challenges in using it.

Students in two classes at the same Japanese university conducted peer assessments on their peers’ presentations. In one class, the students utilized a Likert-type scale assessment sheet with Categories 1–4. In the other class, the students utilized a rubric assessment sheet where qualitative definitions of evaluative items were written at particular levels of achievement. These data were compared, using a multifaceted Rasch analysis computer program.

With the recent change of English as a primary subject in elementary schools, Japanese homeroom teachers have faced difficulties. This presentation will describe the teaching circumstances between a Japanese English teacher and an assistant language teacher. With two experienced teachers who understand the curriculum goals, lesson planning and delivery appear to be more efficient than with a homeroom teacher. Compared to class feedback from another school, students overall enjoyed classes and learnt more English.

This presentation will focus on an innovative face-to-face testing system that incorporates a variety of digital prompts to assess students utilizing a rubric based on CEFR-J can-do statements. This speaking test is designed specifically for Japanese learners of English and assesses their ability to speak and interact. Technology was used to streamline the test by using digital delivery for images and video in conjunction with an online assessment scoring input system.

Literature suggests differences in language settings might cause learnability issues in ESL learners despite the availability of universal grammar (UG). This study aims to examine the above claim and understand if ESL learners’ (L1-Telugu) knowledge of resumptive pronouns in complex wh-interrogatives shows the full access model of UG in SLA is true. The findings provided evidence of their knowledge of RP at the level of full-transfer along with their bias for its position of occurrence.

This study reports on the presenter’s own reflective practice in autoethnography, which is a qualitative method utilizing data about self to deepen understanding of sociocultural complexity. By establishing connectivity with others in an autoethnographic orientation, the presenter explores the integration of pragmatics and grammar pedagogy. The findings stress the significance of connecting the notion of language teaching to lived experiences, suggesting a new direction of promoting L2 pragmatic pedagogy in an interdisciplinary approach.

This study examines two groups of Japanese university students who participated in a five-month and ten-month study program overseas during the COVID-19 pandemic. Both groups were required to take the TOEIC exam pre-departure and post-arrival, and quantitative analyses were used to measure any improvements at both the individual and group level. Research methods were also utilized to determine the effects of the pandemic on the overall study abroad experience.

To the best of the presenter’s knowledge, no studies (in English) have been found on ALTs specific impacts at the prefectural level concerning English language outcomes in Shizuoka. The study’s findings showed that teaching methods continue to be influenced by traditional teaching methods; however, there is some effort to integrate more communicative approaches. For more positive impacts, there is a need for clarity across schools about ALTs’ job roles and functions.

Often met with disdain and mistrust by regular instructors, corporate “dispatch” language companies have become widespread in Japanese higher education. However, as these companies and their instructors are here to stay, a closer examination of them is of value. What can regular instructors and departments learn and gain from their corporate counterparts? The presenters examine the experiences of surveyed ex-dispatch instructors as well as provide their own insights and recommendations.

This presentation investigates the relationship foreign faculty in Japan have with their university through the lens of organizational psychology. The study highlights why educators’ commitment to their university is increasingly important, the positive outcomes that result from greater faculty commitment, and what department administrators and other leaders should consider in order to improve the relationships faculty have with their institutions.

This study examined the effects of form-focused instruction on the development of grammatical accuracy in speaking production over time. Approximately 100 Japanese university students did a weekly cartoon narration task in English for seven weeks. Participants were divided into one comparison and two experimental groups where experimental group participants received grammar interventions before speaking narrations. Three participants were chosen from each group and the trajectory of changes in their grammatical accuracy were examined.

Japanese university students sometimes lack confidence in their ability to speak English. In this presentation, the researcher will discuss how students’ learning experiences may be contributing to lack of confidence through the perspective of self-efficacy (SE). Using the quantitative findings of sources of EFL speaking SE inventory, the presenter will outline some of the learning experiences that appear to hinder students’ confidence to speak English.

This study explored learner perceptions and readiness for autonomy after one year of emergency remote learning. An open-ended survey was administered to 850 first-year undergraduates across eight faculties. Qualitative analysis of learner perspectives highlighted positive and negative impacts of self-directed online learning in areas such as technology, social relationships, affective issues, and self-monitoring strategies. The researchers concluded that autonomy-based educational technology should be widely adopted in higher education contexts and, if possible, pre-university orientation programs.

手話における「指さし」は、特徴的で多機能な手話文法項目の１つであり、日常会話でも多く使われる。本調査では、多くの初中級手話学習者が受験する全国手話検定試験の対策標準テキスト（5級～準1·1級）に出ている指さしの出現箇所と機能を調べ、手話初中級者に対する指さしの教え方、学習順序についての考察を行う。

An online international exchange program was implemented to enhance students’ willingness to communicate (WTC) as an extracurricular activity in a public junior high school. Discussion and reflection after each one of three sessions revealed how the nine students viewed academic English and what they want to learn in school. In order to support the qualitative data, the WTC questionnaire was distributed and analyzed to capture the changes in three sessions.

This presentation introduces the podcast project called Lost in Citations. With each episode centred on an academic publication, we invited scholars from a wide variety of fields to discuss their research in a more in-depth way and learn more about their background. We cover our subsequent text-mining activities, including an example of thematic similarities that emerged within a series of our research-based interviews with academics in connected fields.

This presentation will discuss results from a longitudinal study aimed at investigating intercultural competence development in largely monocultural, foreign language classrooms. Particular attention will be given to the development of core intercultural competence components, namely curiosity, openness, and respect, as well as an awareness of local and global issues. The presenter will discuss results of pre- and post-intervention surveys, reflective journals, and focus group discussions collected over one semester among 180 EFL university students.

This study aimed to uncover the attitudinal factors impacting a group of 1st-year Japanese university students’ (N = 89) self-perceived intercultural competence (IC) prior to a 6-week US-based study-abroad program. Thematic analysis from reaction papers following an interactive lecture-workshop orientation revealed that: 1) participants typically perceived their IC through either an individual lens and/or a collective lens, and 2) they then adopted either a passive or proactive mindset towards their impending study abroad experience.

Regarding Japanese pronunciation of English, while errors at the phoneme level allow full understanding by native English speakers, prosodic errors greatly reduce comprehensibility (Yamane, 2007), necessitating improvement of prosody such as intonation. This study attempts to enable effective pronunciation teaching in the field of education by describing in detail the actual pronunciation of English intonation by Japanese speakers and by providing an explanation for this based on the Japanese intonation system.

Providing feedback is essential for teaching. However, we wanted to make the classroom more student-centred by allowing students opportunities for self-correction through activities that encourage output from them. Students were asked to reflect on their performance in mid-term and final speaking tests before being given feedback from us in order to provide an opportunity for them to identify their own strengths and weaknesses. We look at the benefits and limitations of this reflective process.

Report on a qualitative study of self-reported personal growth in Japanese university students following a long-term study abroad (SA) program. A series of semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted over several weeks. Subjects were asked to reflect on how they changed during their SA time. They were encouraged to give examples, tell stories, follow tangents, and expand on answers. Common themes included increased tolerance of ambiguity, changed perception of other cultures, and personal self-empowerment.

This narrative research study explored EFL teachers’ experiences with neurodiverse students (those with dyslexia, ADHD, and autism) at the tertiary level in Japan and their self-efficacy for inclusive practice. Bandura’s (1977) theory of self-efficacy was used as a framework for interpreting teachers’ interview data. Findings indicate that EFL teachers at the tertiary level in Japan lack training and institutional support necessary to create inclusive environments. Solutions and tips for inclusion will be discussed with participants.

In this presentation, the researcher discusses an exploratory study that investigates how “human-like” DeepL translations are and what ramifications neural machine translations (NMT) will have on English writing courses. The researcher provides some background on NMT, presents results from a study that examined teachers’ evaluations of student essays (some written in English and others in Japanese and subsequently translated into English), and finally considers the dilemma of DeepL for English writing courses and pathways forward.

This presentation introduces how design thinking (DT) was used in a university English course to facilitate communication and creative collaboration. The presentation will introduce the work of the students and survey results on student engagement, confidence communicating, and developing cognitive flexibility. Attendees at the presentation will leave with theoretical insights into the impact of DT on student engagement and practical suggestions for implementing DT in language lessons.

This research analyzed positional data for 2,539 illustrations from fourteen elementary EFL textbooks. This analysis revealed significant differences between the left- and right-hand pages. These unique visual presentation tendencies are discussed in terms of their potential semantic significance. It is hoped that these findings provide insight into compositional patterns that could be of value to those who arrange images for pedagogic purposes, be it as an educator or materials designer.

Project-based learning and teaching (PBLT) has been recognized as an approach that fosters learner autonomy. This presentation introduces the Students as Teachers project, during which university students prepared and taught a 90-minute lesson based on a unit from a four skills textbook. Student reflections throughout the project and at the end of it will be discussed in detail to show how students developed new perspectives on their development as learners of English.

This presentation will describe a longitudinal study examining the performance of a Japanese university English as a roreign language (EFL) program over a 20-year period. Time-series analyses were conducted using TOEFL ITP results for 20 student cohorts to investigate emerging English proficiency trends. The results indicated that specific institutional events, as well as larger population trends impacting Japanese universities, led to gradual shifts in program student demographics, which contributed to changes in proficiency patterns.

Public speaking phobia can have a negative impact on students’ ability to function in the classroom and effectively acquire a second language. This talk will discuss an investigation into the best methods for reducing this anxiety in students, including virtual reality and imagination-based exposure training, mindfulness practice, presentation methods instruction, and more. Participants’ comments from program interviews and surveys will also be presented to explore best practices for classroom presentation activities and assessments by instructors.

The presenter will demonstrate how Japanese university students were able to face the challenges of Emergency Remote Learning (ERL) when working on group projects. Most students rated themselves as adaptable to remote learning because they completed tasks on time and participated actively in Zoom sessions. However, at times, they felt unmotivated. Their reflections illustrate that ERL was difficult but rewarding as they had acquired technological skills that they could use after the end of COVID-19.

English Clinic is a person-to-person tutoring program designed to provide the opportunity for oral communication experience for students in an English program at a university. This presentation will provide a brief description of English Clinic, argue for its necessity, give an analysis of program efficacy, and give recommendations for development. The aim is to improve the program and help guide other institutions by providing insights in how tutoring clinics can be implemented successfully.

An area of ESL pedagogy that often frustrates both teachers and students is written corrective feedback. Recently, an alternative form of multimodal feedback, video screen capture feedback (VSC), that can tackle criticisms of written corrective feedback has been gaining attention. In this session, the presenters will discuss the results of a study conducted at a private university that trialed VSC. They will also expand on students’ opinions and comment on their experiences using the technology.

The goal of this presentation is to describe the outcomes of a collaborative professional development project designed specifically for the needs and interests of language teachers looking to get started with quantitative research. The presenter will introduce the goals and methods of the 2018 quantitative research training project and then describe outcomes in terms of participation evidence, teacher feedback, and tangible products including conference presentations and published papers.

Collaborative online international learning (COIL) is a method of virtual exchange that offers a way to help bridge the opportunity gap to study abroad by providing cross-cultural exchanges without leaving home. This presentation outlines the process of implementing COIL activities with university students in China and Japan and reports on the impact of such activities on student perspectives of language development, motivation to study a foreign language, and intercultural competencies.

This study examines pre-service team-teaching (TT) training courses for Japanese and English-speaking international students in an education-majored university. The author’s participant observation, interviews with the students, and their reflective notes were analyzed. Japanese students’ English communicative competence is a decisive factor affecting TT role-sharing and satisfaction of their TT performances, but power struggles were sometimes seen. Additionally, opportunities for on-campus intercultural interactions were created through collaborative learning, contributing to enhancing the Japanese students’ intercultural skills.

This presentation outlines what was learned as my preparations for a year of research into establishing a small professional learning community (PLC) to retain tech knowledge were altered over a 24-hour period when the COVID lockdown was announced. Suddenly I was standing up with administration as the entire school was forced to join my tiny PLC and we rode the wave into Google Classroom as an LMS, developing online conferences and interactions for our students.

Metaphor is an important feature of academic discourse that is used in a range of disciplines to express abstract concepts. For example, economics makes frequent use of health metaphors (the economy is ailing/thriving). This presentation reports on the findings of a corpus study to identify common metaphors across a range of disciplines. The presenter will discuss the use of metaphor in various disciplines and teaching materials to develop awareness of metaphorical vocabulary.

Many language instructors use humor to improve the class atmosphere and make learning more memorable. With the sudden shift to online teaching, however, what challenges did teachers face and how did they manage to still incorporate humor into their lessons? The presenters will summarize the results of a mixed-methods survey administered to English language teachers (N = 60) in Japan. Quantitative and qualitative analysis will be shared, along with ramifications for online instruction.

MEXT has encouraged “small talk” conversation activities in elementary schools. However, homeroom teachers and students may be unsure how to conduct these activities smoothly. The presenters have created experimental resources and guidelines to support and expand on small talk, and monitored their implementation in local 5th and 6th grade classrooms. The presenters will summarize the results these initiatives have had, using data from surveys, interviews, and classroom observations, and make suggestions based on their findings.

The purpose of this presentation is to explore the efficacy and effectiveness of self, peer, and teacher assessment of discussions from both student and teacher perspectives. This research centers around the use of check sheets of discussion function phrases which were used to measure individual students’ input and participation in a small group discussion. Students were asked to reflect on each type of assessment, and their participant observations were compared with those of the author.

This presentation will first provide an overview of the Spring 2020 ERTL transformation of a traditional paper notebook weekly journal assignment into an inter-classroom e-publication: The University Freshmen Flash Fiction Series. Then, the results of learner self-reflection (N=35) regarding their creative writing assignment experiences in a dedicated Academic Evidence-Based Essay Course will be shared. Finally, a rationale for including creative writing as a part of a university freshmen learners’ writing portfolio will be discussed.

CLIL is a growing trend in Japanese universities yet published research is scarce. This presentation details a scoping review conducted on this research space. After describing the methodology, the session covers research trends, foci, findings, and gaps identified in the selected studies (N = 47). Results indicate numerous practice-based descriptive studies while empirical studies are atypical, meaning detailed reportable findings are rare. The session finishes by discussing potential enhancements to remedy research space concerns.

While challenging, the COVID-19 period has provided the opportunity to identify strengths and weaknesses of online versions of what would otherwise be classroom based courses and activities. This presentation compares online and in-class versions of a university EAP program for students wishing to study abroad. Results suggest that greater online and classroom integration is possible.

English-medium Instruction (EMI) has grown rapidly in Japan, with nearly half of universities offering EMI programs. Unfortunately, there has been no parallel growth in support for faculty members who face challenges teaching in these classrooms. This presentation explores professional development (PD) experiences, needs, and expectations among teachers in EMI programs across Japan, revealing specific competencies that they hope to gain from PD and some interesting differences between Japanese and international faculty members.

Students’ and teachers’ wellbeing has emerged as a common concern in research during COVID-19. Based on qualitative research and the data of 10 FGDs with teachers (25) and students (19) in private universities (11) in Bangladesh, the paper shows that online teaching is affected by contextual, material, physical, social, and psychological challenges, and, consequently, both teachers and students experience anxieties and stresses. Students from a non-privileged background suffer more than others.

This study looks at a cohort of 12 students in a new MA TESOL program at a Sino-US joint university in China. Through surveys and focus group interviews, the researchers intend to uncover these teachers’ perceptions of current professional development options, and the rationale for pursuing an advanced degree. Discussions will focus on the needs of EFL teachers’ suggestions for future directions, as well as implications for policymakers and education administrators.

This presentation will offer insight into what students feel is useful for feedback on written work in English. A variety of methods for providing feedback to students will be explained, indicating which methods are preferred and most referred to during subsequent revisions of work. Understanding how students engage with feedback can help instructors prioritize methods of dissemination and improve efficiency, while keeping students focused and motivated.

Stories have been used educationally, including in second language classrooms. This presentation will introduce a pilot study on identity formation through student-told anecdotes. Qualitative research was conducted in which English majors at a Japanese university presented a personal story after receiving lessons on narrative structure and vocal modulation. Results from a narrative frames questionnaire and students’ perspectives on the anecdote project will be discussed. Ideas for improving student-told anecdotes will be demonstrated.

This presentation details an analysis of student speaking before and after a period of study abroad in an English-speaking country. Videos of students engaging in spontaneous conversation with classmates were recorded and transcribed. The analysis of Pre- and Post- study abroad data shows changes in both quantitative and qualitative terms. The aim of the presentation is to highlight the development of interactional skills that may be invisible on standardized written tests.

The presenter will report the results of a genre-based research to compare essays for TOEFL Independent Writing Task and IELTS Writing Task 2. For analysis, 31 model essays have been selected from three publications: the Official Guide to the TOEFL iBT Test 6th Edition, Official TOEFL iBT Tests Volume 2, and Cambridge IELTS Practice Tests. The presenter will suggest useful essay structures and linguistic features of quality essays for the two tasks respectively.

In recent years the increase in availability of computerized speech recognition and speech synthesis has led to exciting possibilities in the field of foreign language learning. Traditionally learning activities do not require students to vocalize their responses. This paper presentation will show an analysis of the effectiveness of speech recognition using online speaking on student reactions over 3 institutions as part of Kakenhi research.

Teletandem is an online language exchange, where two students learning each other’s languages are paired to practise their languages and support each other’s learning online. The researchers administered a survey and several interviews to investigate the experiences of teletandem participants from a Japanese and an Australian university, specifically focussing on the programme’s impact on students’ motivation to learn, their autonomous learning skills, and their identities as language learners and users.

This institution-based case study investigated teacher agency in an in-house textbook development process for a university-level English debate course. The study found that manifestations of teacher agency in the textbook production process were non-linear and adaptive due to the instructor’s in-person experiences and negotiations with her students and co-textbook writers, and her attempt to establish an alignment with a larger institutional context. The researchers discuss select results from a sociomaterial perspective to highlight important findings.

A recent increase in the popularity and selection of English language graphic novels has yet to significantly impact EFL pedagogy. Does the combination of text and visuals have a positive impact on story comprehension, vocabulary intake, and overall satisfaction? This research, comparing students reading either the text or graphic novel version of The Babysitters Club, indicates it does. Test data and survey results show the value of using graphic novels compared to only text.

A case study exploring Japanese university students’ reluctance to adopt technology for learning was conducted integrating technology into an academic English course. Qualitative data explored student experiences and changes in perceptions about using technology using factors from the technology acceptance model (TAM). Two major factors influenced perception with a uniquely Japanese socio-cultural factor emerging as a possible barrier to technology interaction. A model for integrating technology to increase academic engagement will be presented.

The primary purpose of this presentation is to explore the structural relationships among intercultural communicative competence (ICC) and two related concepts that affect global citizenship: namely, rational compassion (Bloom, 2017) and meta-personal self (DeCicco et al., 2007). The questionnaire, prepared based on previous studies, was administered among 200 Japanese university students. The results indicated that meta-personal self predicted rational compassion, and rational compassion predicted global citizenship through ICC. Pedagogical implications will be discussed.

In this presentation, I describe the context and challenges that led me to include social emotional learning (SEL) methods in my teaching. I discuss specific strategies and activities I utilized in online university courses with ELLs and share some positive outcomes of the approach. SEL practices include various activities and strategies; however, as the method I utilized was not implemented campus-wide, I introduce only a handful of activities and strategies that learners successfully used.

This presentation will report on an approach to raising the pragmatics awareness of lower-level learners in an English program at a university in Japan, with a focus on building receptive pragmatics ability through reading. The presentation will explain the process of conducting informed analyses of texts in reading textbooks, and developing and collecting students’ responses to classroom activities and assessments designed to build L2 pragmatics ability and sensitivity to intercultural pragmatics.

Motivations for choosing English teaching as a career have attracted considerable attention in recent years, and a number of research studies have been conducted to gain insights into English teachers’ reasons for entering teacher education programmes. This presentation will answer the question: Who chooses ELT as a career in Nepal and why? It also explores the job satisfaction level of the participants and the professional development activities they adopt to develop their professional competence.

P-CHAT is a software tool that provides teachers with actionable data, and gives students automated feedback on conversations with their peers. Each conversation session is recorded and analyzed automatically. Student progress on key metrics can be tracked over a semester or year. In the presentation, P-CHAT will be introduced by its designer and it’s developer.

The present study arose during hybrid lessons at a Japanese university that used both synchronous online and face-to-face modes. The presenter will point out different conversation styles, the use of turn taking, and use of gestures online in Zoom breakout rooms compared to face-to-face conversation. The findings highlight elements of conversation in the face-to-face mode that seem to be missing or lacking in the online mode.

This presentation examines learners' understanding and development of difficult spatial prepositional usages of “at,” “from,” “in,” “on,” and “to.” Results indicate semantic complexity and metacognitive understanding of these prepositions are some of the main obstacles for learners to overcome in order to enhance their learning. This ongoing investigation illustrates that a usage-based approach to the development of learning tasks provides an effective strategy to support learners' language development, confidence, and self-efficacy.

First, an overview of peer teaching will be given. Next, an introduction to a peer-teaching activity will be shared. Then data will be presented about students’ opinions about the experience of teaching, how this experience will help them in the future, advice they would give to others about peer teaching, and if peer teaching was a positive or negative experience. Lastly, possible ways for instructors to use this activity will be discussed.

Speaking fluency is a common language learning goal, and fluency has been linked with the use of multi-word expressions. The effectiveness of a fluency workshop to increase learner knowledge, spoken use and fluency with multi-word expressions (for example: “I think I will” and “would you like to”) will be reported. Teachers can expect practical ideas for building learner knowledge and use of multi-word expressions using the interactive workshop activities in both face-to-face and online classrooms.

In this presentation, I rethink the notion of language learning. Based on my larger multifaceted research project, I focus on the phenomenon that individuals in Japan are often involved in English in a more divergent way than what language learning means in the conventional sense. To further explore this trend, I propose the idea of engagements, which will contribute to providing more comprehensive understandings of English in Japan than what is available in the literature.

This presentation provides two new perspectives about language teaching on TBLT, Living Newspaper Readers Theatre (LNRT), and a way for almost instantaneous reflection on student performance (cloud-based feedback). The presentation will first describe what LNRT is, and how to effectively give immediate online feedback about both style and form of performances. Most importantly, we will describe research conducted on LNRT and cloud-based feedback. We will end with reflection by attendees.

As we transition back into the classroom, digital tools have taken center stage to aid and assist in our teaching. One of the more effective methods is building an effective LMS system. This presentation will focus on one of the more popular systems, Moodle, and how it can augment any classroom to deliver quality digital resources to all students.

This study examined intermediate and advanced Japanese EFL learners’ perceptions regarding their own and their teachers’ responsibility in learning the foreign language autonomously, their decision-making ability in learning the foreign language, and their EFL autonomous learning activities inside and outside the classroom.

To cultivate higher order thinking skills and 21st century skills such as the 4Cs, the author proposes that it is promising to apply the principles of the case method (Ellet, 2018), which is widely practiced at business schools. The presentation introduces how the author applied the ideas and conducted a case teaching session in general English reading classes. It also explains students’ reaction to it in terms of fostering 21st century skills.

Collaborative online international learning (COIL) is a pedagogical approach that allows students to experience intercultural exchange without the financial burden associated with traditional mobility programs. In this study, we examine the impact of such a COIL program on Japanese and American students regarding their attitudes and beliefs towards using English as lingua franca in nursing education. We assessed students’ perceptions of multilingual and multicultural collaboration through four psychometric scales.

This study reports the professional experiences of three immigrant Chinese language teachers (ICLTs) regarding their professional acculturation into the Singapore education system. This study investigates how the ICLTs constructed their teaching identities through the negotiation of their positionality in their daily working life at school. The research findings indicate that healthy acculturation of the ICLTs required efforts to be made by both sides - ICLTs and members of the host school community.

Eye-tracking equipment for second language acquisition purposes is an underused tool. This is due in part to budget constraints and a lack of affordable devices on the market. This study examines whether low-cost, self-fabricated equipment can be used to assist students in their study of the Test of English for International Communication (TOEIC) by allowing students the opportunity to visually observe their recorded eye-movements after taking a TOEIC practice examination.

Storytelling is often utilized within the classroom as it has the ability to combine numerous skills in an engaging manner. This presentation examines the rationale for developing a university course based on storytelling and students’ perspectives on its contents, framing both topics in the context of the CEFR CV. This analysis utilizes concepts from selected descriptive scales to illustrate challenges and opportunities using this medium to help students improve their creative and communicative skills.

In this presentation, a university EFL teacher will detail their implementation of the English Central e-learning platform in a blended learning environment. Considering student’s reported perspectives and experiences, as well as current correlative research, the presenter contends that the success of the endeavor is owed to this specific platform’s strengths coupled with a balance of face-to-face and self-study e-learning components.

This presentation compares two paid vocabulary acquisition software applications: EnglishCentral and iKnow. Study results provide insight into how much time a group of university students spent using each application over the course of a semester, and how motivating students found each application. Additionally, practical information is provided for teachers and administrators thinking about implementing language-learning software in the classroom. English learners interested in finding out more about vocabulary applications are welcome to attend.

In this study, interactional features revealed by conversation analysis (CA) were presented back to an L2 learner of Japanese as a resource to foster language learning. By analyzing talk-in-interaction between the learner and two first language interlocutors and by cross-referencing data via retrospective interviews, learning opportunities were achieved regarding turn-taking, repair, and the occasional disjoining of content flow during talk. I present findings with bilingual transcription excerpts and discuss adapting these ideas for classroom settings.

Remote learning in 2020 has increased student anxiety of learning academic writing at a university level. This study explores the effectiveness of interactions using a learning management system (LMS) during process writing to develop their writing skills and their understanding of the essay topic: remote learning. The research findings show that the LMS enabled class collaboration to promote writing skills and content understanding which resulted in reduced stress in the academic writing courses.

Although fluency writing tasks are commonly used in EFL courses, research that is helpful in setting fluency development goals is limited. We investigated fluency development and the impact of modality (typing and handwriting) over one semester. Results suggest that modality affects both the amount produced and the rate of growth.

In recent years, a number of Japanese EFL teachers at the secondary school level have participated in short-term teacher training programs in English speaking countries. However, we do not have much knowledge about teachers’ experiences of learning to teach after they return to their native countries. Therefore, this study explores how Japanese EFL teachers appropriated the pedagogical resources presented in one of the overseas training programs into their own classroom instruction back home.

Willingness to communicate (WTC) accounts for learners pursuing communication opportunities and encountering affordances for L2 development. While many WTC factors are known, few studies focus on how learners control their own WTC levels or manipulate WTC antecedents. In response, students in this study used idiodynamic methodology to elicit their peers’ WTC-focused strategy use. Acting as researchers, learners elicited six kinds of strategies which they intended to use for future self-improvement, peer rapprochement, or personal reassurance.

With the recent dramatic rise in online exchanges, it is now possible for students to get help from expert peers overseas; however, little is known about the processes of expert peer collaboration. Drawing on a sociocultural view of learning, this study investigates the experiences of Japanese learners of English when participating in a seven-week virtual exchange with American learners of Japanese through the lens of activity theory.

Is teaching via zoom here to stay? The presenter will share quantitative and qualitative research of student attitudes of online learning after 2020. Participants were all university students in the same course. While some students found online learning ineffective, there were a number of compelling positive points. This presentation will share what learning online was like from a student’s perspective, useful tips to minimize cheating, and effective strategies to deal with students suspected of cheating.

Masks pose a unique challenge in the EFL classroom, as attenuated speech signals, loss of visual cues, and even discomfort can have a negative impact on the L2 learner. This study investigated the effects of masks in the EFL classroom through questionnaires and listening comprehension tests with particular interest in the role of teachers’ L1, visual cues, and microphones. An overview of the research and results with an emphasis on recommended practices will be presented.

The presenter will report on a qualitative investigation of Japanese college students' learning experience in teletandem. During the COVID-19 pandemic, a group of Japanese female college students had joined a series of language learning sessions with American college students online since October 2020. Drawing on the analysis of pre-/post-questionnaires, student reflections, and interviews, the researcher will discuss the impact of tandem learning in the online environment, particularly on the students’ self-concepts in L2 learning.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, instructors globally have struggled with how to effectively use online tools and features to help their students. Now, as in-person classes resume, the question is how to effectively utilize what was developed online in the physical classroom. This presentation will outline measures taken to improve students’ online experience of a first-year writing program and describe practices we will continue after the move back to in-person instruction.

This presentation discusses what empathy is in terms of interactional competence, and problematizes the current scope of L2 pragmatic instruction. Constructing empathetic moments together with the interlocutor is critical in order to build social relationships and social solidarity. However, the ways in which L2 speakers display empathy (or not) in ordinary conversations lack in-depth discussion. Using conversation analysis, we analyze empathetic moments between Swedish and Japanese advanced users of English and discuss possible interventions.

The Moodle item feedback option was used to deliver two types of Japanese feedback, generic and explicit, for performance on multiple-choice items testing knowledge of participles, and comparatives and superlatives. Participants at two institutions, in experimental and control groups, received either the generic feedback (“try harder”) or the explicit explanation of why their selection was incorrect. Pre- and post-tests were used to measure gains. Results and implications will be provided and discussed.

Many extensive reading programs faced difficulties when classes moved online during the COVID-19 pandemic as it became difficult or impossible for students to borrow physical books from a library. In response, interest surged in entirely online extensive reading programs, which brought new challenges. This presentation will compare student and instructor experiences with traditional and online graded reader systems, with reference to a survey given to students who had used both the traditional and the online system.

Recently, there has been a considerable increase in interest in the teaching and assessment of interactional competence. However, its key to ensure that any assessment rubric functions effectively and reliably. This presentation reports on the process of rubric development that combined quantitative analysis using Many Facet Rasch Measurement with qualitative feedback from raters. Based on these analyses, recommendations are given for the development of well-functioning, reliable rubrics for assessing interactional competence and speaking skills.

For many EFL students, the places where English is spoken are geographically distant. In this context, a risk exists of their language learning experiences occurring in the form of a non-spatialized bubble. To counter this, maps may be used as a tool to inspire a sense of connectedness. This presentation explores undergraduate perceptions across a range of nodes and examines levels of inspiration derived from interactions with maps.

The senpai/kohai (mentor/junior) relationship is one of the core sociological features of Japanese culture, particularly in the context of education. This presentation reports on the positive effects of having three upperclassmen (senpai) volunteer as teaching assistants in a freshman online English class at a private university in Japan. Surveys and interviews indicate that having this important senpai/kohai interaction within the classroom increased learner motivation to study English, and learners’ overall performance improved.

In this presentation, how and where the first-person pronoun “we” is used in research articles written in English by authors of different linguistic backgrounds will be discussed. A research article corpus was created to analyze the uses of “we” in different sections of research articles. The metatextual uses of “we” were also examined using the verbs that collocate with “we.” The results show that “we” is widely used throughout science research articles.

Online international exchanges are becoming an essential element of teaching and learning intercultural communicative competence. One of the challenges for learners engaged in such virtual exchanges is that not all participants may be familiar with specific aspects of their own lingua-culture. In this study, we developed an inquiry-based model of online intercultural exchange. We then conducted a series of empirical experiments to test the validity of the model in an L2 classroom in Japan.

This study explores L2 writers’ felt sense of writing in English as perceived by Japanese students. The results showed that the participants’ emotions regarding writing demonstrated the complexities of expressing themselves in English due to the differences in word meaning, usage, and styles. Although the participants’ emotions regarding writing made them insecure about writing in English, their emotions showed the importance of performing writing and achieving their academic goals through writing practices.

This presentation deals with reasons that some language learners have trouble fully participating in the classroom. Japanese university students filled out questionnaires that asked them which obstacles to participation were most common and which had the most effect. Interviews were then held with selected students, and students discussed ways to deal with the most significant obstacles with the course instructor. The solutions that emerged were compiled into a document that will be shared with participants.

This presentation highlights the implementation of a content and language integrated learning (CLIL) curriculum that was designed to instruct would-be teachers on the principles of game based learning (GBL) within their English language classes. Reasons for doing so stemmed from a desire to go beyond simple ESL instruction and provide students with tools that would better prepare them for their future jobs as teachers. Games used and made by students in class are demonstrated throughout.

In this study, I will present a detailed analysis of video-recorded classroom interactions provided by MEXT. Using a conversation analytic (CA) approach, I will explore how English teachers deploy interactional resources to create interactional space with the students. Based on the analysis, I will discuss some implications for teacher development.

This presentation analyzes potential correlations between self-efficacy and causal attributions for a standard speaking test in a public Japanese university. The study was conducted with first- and second-year students that sought to analyze their capability beliefs going into the speaking test and attributions for perceived success or failure upon receiving the result. The presentation will outline the relationships between self-efficacy, attribution, and achievement. Issues of gender and years of study are also considered.

This presentation examines the results of a survey on self-reported academic dishonesty among English language learners (ELLs) across nine Japanese universities. The study includes the domains of cheating on tests, plagiarism, falsehoods in assignments, and dishonest acts committed in English language classes. An analysis shows the prevalence of cheating and the most frequent behaviors. The presenter concludes that by knowing the common traps in which students fall, educators can proactively work to increase academic integrity.

This presentation discusses the intent, methods, data, and analyses of a one-semester quantitative investigation examining the question: Does the method (individual vs. group) of selecting a graded reader affect student engagement in an extensive reading (ER) activity? The data collected and analyzed suggests that learner engagement in ER-related activities is affected by whether the individual or group chooses the reader.

This study examined student peer raters’ use of holistic rating scales in relation to analytic rating scales in peer assessments of EFL oral presentations. Japanese university students evaluated their classmates’ presentations using both holistic and analytic rating scales. Using a series of statistical analyses, including the many-facet Rasch measurement analysis, the researcher will discuss the role of analytic rating criteria in student peer raters’ holistic ratings.

To estimate the necessary amount of words in reading to push students’ English level into the next stage, data for six years (2014-2019) were analyzed to find the threshold value of words that causes changes in TOEIC Bridge test scores. The result implies that the amount of reading around 500,000 words plays a critical role in advancing to the next language level.

This presentation will detail the development of a Presenting in a Foreign Language Anxiety Scale (PFLAS) designed to measure the anxiety university students experience when making presentations in English. The results of an initial administration of the survey will be given, student responses to the scale and their significance will be discussed, and finally the next steps in the research process will be considered.

This study examined L2 speakers’ strategies of how to complete an opinion monologue task successfully. The participants were 48 Japanese university students, and they answered a retrospective questionnaire after a task. Among them, four participants also had follow-up interviews. The findings show that the participants prioritized what to talk about rather than grammatical accuracy. Discussion will center on Levelt’s speech model, and how speaking tasks can be implemented will also be discussed.

For many second language learners, study abroad presents an opportunity for both cultural immersion and L2 language development. However, the necessity of social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic has greatly impacted the study abroad experience for many learners. This presentation reports on a cohort of Japanese university students who studied abroad in 2020, including the problems they encountered and the solutions they adopted to maximize their experiences.

With benefits to motivation, reading fluency, learner autonomy and vocabulary knowledge development, extensive reading (ER) is now a common component of university English courses. However, the crucial question of exactly how much ER is required to generate discernible improvement remains largely unanswered. This question is addressed through a year-long study of data on the number of words read by 160 university undergraduates and the gains they made on pre- and post-course vocabulary tests.

This research focuses on one Japanese middle school student’s reading and interpretation of the nonfiction picture book Lotte’s Magical Paper Puppets: The Woman Behind the First Animated Film. The purpose was to see if the visual text would help the student understand the vocabulary in the written text. It also focused on her interpretations of the visual text and recall ability for both visual and written texts.

This study explores the equivalency of seven picture-based speaking tasks by comparing the oral performance they elicit from Japanese L2 learners. Despite controlling for variables across story length, sequential structure, and storyline complexity, the results were similar only in terms of fluency and not complexity, accuracy, or lexis. The study highlights the importance of piloting testing materials for conducting experimental research using a pretest-posttest design.

This presentation outlines a study investigating members’ identification with a student-led learning community within a university self-access centre. Interview data from members suggested members’ identities within the community were connected to the comfortable learning environment, an international, imagined English community, and the negotiation of certain sociocultural norms. This presentation will also address practical implications based on the findings of this study for SAC staff aiming to cultivate and support student-led learning communities.

In this presentation, we will share the results of an end-of-term survey, which explores the impact that our use of teams had on students in online Debate and Presentation classes. This research will consider theoretical frameworks from psychological and pedagogical perspectives to investigate possible relationships between online teamwork, students’ self-reported anxiety, team cohesion, and motivation. At the end of the presentation, there will be suggestions for future research and teaching practice, followed by discussion time.

What technology is actually used in public schools in Japan? Ongoing government policy changes and projects (GIGA School Programme) regarding technology suggest classrooms are evolving and modernising. This presentation will discuss the results of a mixed-methods survey about the availability and usage of CALL in public schools as of spring 2021. Results are based on the responses of English teachers across Japan, giving insight into the current landscape of technology in Japanese public schools.

What teaching techniques are being used by Japanese teachers of English in high schools? To what extent are these techniques achieving the goals set by MEXT? What can be done to improve the quality of English language teaching in Japan? All these questions and more will be answered in this presentation of an exciting and innovative research project conducted in high schools across Japan in 2020.

This presentation will discuss findings from a research project on the generation effect in the L2 university classroom. The study looked at the effects of generating original meaning in isolation from other learning strategies to see if the generation effect alone is effective in long-term vocabulary retention. The study’s findings, using linear mixed effects analyses, did not show efficacy of generation when used in isolation when compared to the control groups.

Research has shown that text-based computer-mediated communication (CMC) has many advantages over face-to-face communication, and the skills learned in the former can transfer to the latter. These findings suggest that CMC may remain pedagogically useful after the pandemic to prepare students for classroom interaction. The present study compares EFL students’ group discussions in two written CMC contexts (synchronous and asynchronous), focusing on how effectively these discussions prepare students for subsequent face-to-face discussions.

This study was on the use of hedges in L2 English learners’ online discussion via the LINE messaging platform. Specifically, the study focused on the influence of two interactant-related variables on learners' use of hedges: non-agreement and relationship closeness. The study found that there was a slightly greater rate of hedge use in responses that expressed non-agreement and a higher rate of hedge use between participants who were distant.

Translanguaging often appears in English as a medium of instruction students’ notes, as multilingual students employ their language resources to take notes during lectures. This presentation shares analysis of 500+ sets of student notes and survey results and presents models of translanguaging in notetaking. Attendees will gain insights into notetaking and appreciation for the benefits of translanguaging practices in academic listening. Practical tips for teaching notetaking and assessing note content will be proposed.

Are you preparing your students for English interactions in a globalized world? You may consider innovating your teaching practice based on global Englishes language teaching (GELT), which recognizes that English is used as a common language by speakers from diverse lingua-cultural backgrounds. At this presentation, you will learn about GELT and the practicality of GELT curricular innovation according to a study conducted with in-service English teachers. Real-world applications of the research will be discussed.

Student volunteers are vital to running a conference successfully, and volunteer feedback can be used as a tool to improve the conference experience for both volunteers and attendees. This presentation will give a brief overview of the student volunteer process, from initial recruitment to final training, and will share the results of a mixed-method survey in which student volunteers reflect on their experience. Suggestions on how to improve the volunteer experience will be discussed.